This invention relates to improvements in primary, secondary and display containers for food, beverages and other consumer products packaged in a sealed condition to prolong the useable life of the product and to protect the product against air, other gases, and/or moisture as well as to provide physical protection during filling, processing, warehousing, distribution, merchandising and customer use.
Packaging is a multibillion dollar industry. In the food, beverage and consumer goods portion of the packaging industry, the costs associated with conventional containers, whether made of metal, plastic, glass, paperboard, composite, or of single-layer or multilayer materials, are a continually pressing concern because of materials' costs and disposability concerns. These costs are directly reduced, however, by decreasing the amount of material used resulting in a concomitant reduction in the amount of material requiring disposal and, consequently, the costs associated therewith. Disposal costs are further reduced when the material used is recyclable and/or reuseable in nature.
Thus there have been long-standing, unresolved problems of providing cost-effective packaging suitable for use as a primary, secondary or display container that uses less material yet provides a recyclable container capable of surviving the rigors and stresses of processing, filling, warehousing, distribution, merchandising and customer use.
As compared with other materials of which containers may be formed, paper, such as in the form of layers of wound paperboard or cardboard is the most widely used and the least expensive. This remains true in spite of recent sharp increases in the price of paper. Since paper is a semisynthetic product made by chemically processing cellulosic fibers, such as from various sources including mainly soft woods but also sometimes hard woods as well as other raw organic materials, including flax, bagasse, straw, etc., it is the ultimately preferred material from an environmental viewpoint. It permits recycling of organic source materials, including waste products, and is both incinerable as well as biodegradable. Moreover, paper materials, on a pound-per-pound basis, are also among the strongest available container materials, providing extremely high tensile strength coupled with resilience, as desirable for container manufacturing and intended uses.
It is believed that the packaging industry has failed to address the needs and concerns to which the present invention is directed; the packaging industry has developed around standardized production, concentrating on existing technology and endeavoring to protect existing markets. Consequently, what is needed is a new generation of low-cost recyclable and/or reuseable containers capable of providing the full host of functions consumers demand or expect from containers, including the ability to be handled, shipped, S stored and stacked as well as go directly from shipping or storage into merchandising and display without compromising function undersirably and yet achieving a new economy of material content and cost.